I M M O B I L I S M | a labor of love lost and found (2010-2020)

I wrote these words a long time ago.

Waiting in the same place in Ashrafieh, after a while two passengers complained about the time wasted "m3awwa2? Sarlna rebe3 se3a" ... Driver says "la m3ayyar el se3a ile 6 d2aye2" ... He starts to drive on at a very slow pace... One passenger asks "leh meshe 3a mahlak?? Ma fi 7ada eddemak?" ... "na3am???? Kif badde emashe ya3ne? Li eddeme ilo 6 mins meshe" .... It appears that this line has more occasional/entitled riders. First time I hear anyone question the rules/rhythms of the game.

In other words, the amount of public attention that infrastructure receives — through state campaigns, or the activism of civil society organisations, for example — can also be seen as another form of “biased struggles for social, economic, ecological and political power” (Graham and Marvin, 2001: 11) inherent to the planning process.',

Second, the two hubs are also the headquarters of two rival taxi driver unions. These unions — the General Syndicate For Lebanese Taxi Drivers (in Dora), headed by Marwan Fayad, and the larger Union of Taxi Drivers and Owners (in Cola), headed by Abdelamin Najdi — are split along religious-partisan lines. Though their members will rhetorically deploy the two union’s joint membership in the national-confederal General Syndicate of Labour as a way of downplaying their divisions (Najdi, personal communication, May 28, 2013), their political allegiances and concomitant policy-orientations keep Dora and Cola symbolically and materially disconnected at an institutional level.

I wrote these words in secret, after dark, a long time ago. I hesitated when writing these words.